Martina Pfeiler has been working and teaching in the American Studies program at TU Dortmund Universität since 2002. She has also taught as a guest professor at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, USA, in the academic year 2005/2006 as well as at Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands, in the fall 2009. In 2008 she completed her doctorate summa cum laude with a thesis entitled Poetry Goes Intermedia: U.S.-amerikanische Lyrik des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts aus kultur- und medienwissenschaftlicher Perspektive (Tübingen: Francke Verlag, 2010). In 2003 she published the book Sounds of Poetry Contemporary American Performance Poets (Narr Verlag 2003). She is part of the faculty and coordinators for the International Ph.D. Program in American Studies.
In 2001 she completed her M.A. in British and American Studies and Geography and Economic Studies from the Karl-Franzens-Universität in Graz, Austria. During that time she also did graduate research at SUNY New Paltz, NY, for her M.A. thesis while living in Woodstock, NY, in the summer of 2000. In the fall semester of 1999/2000 she studied British and American Studies at the Roehampton University in London as part of an Erasmus exchange. In 1997 she participated in a summer school on American Cultures and Communications at Texas A&M University and in the academic year 1994/95 she attended the Bromley College of Further and Higher Education in London.